Premier Colin Barnett made the announcement while in Busselton on Friday.

The Premier also announced that aerial patrols would begin eight weeks earlier than usual for the South West region.

Mr Barnett said the State Government would provide Surf Life Saving WA with an additional $650,000 in this year to extend aerial patrols to cover the school holiday period beginning this Saturday, weekends and public holidays, before daily patrols start over the summer period, starting November 24.

The government had planned to continue the kill zone policy where baited hooks on drum lines were set one kilometre from shore on selected WA beaches.

Any great white, bull or tiger shark longer than three metres wa shot dead as part of the program designed to reduce the risk of shark attacks. It was prompted by seven deaths as a result of shark attacks in WA over three years.

Following the EPA's rejection of the drum lines plan Mr Barnett ruled out using drum lines this summer, but said he was still considering other methods to keep beach-goers safe.

The state government is now considering installing shark nets on a number of metropolitan beaches as well as others in the South West and further up the coast north of Perth.

According to a review of the Dunsborough Beach Enclosure Trial compiled by the state government, no by-catch was recorded as part of the net trialled in Dunsborough.

A spokeswoman for the Premier told Fairfax Media that while the net announced on Friday was not the same type of net used in Queensland and New South Wales, it was made up of a mesh type netting.

The state government's review said the planned net for Busselton would be more of a "beach enclosure" deployed to create "an impenetrable barrier to sharks".

A report prepared for the WA Government explains that the usual purpose of netting beaches is to catch sharks rather than create a physical barrier between the animal and beach-goers.

The report prepared by Bond University for the WA Department of Fisheries in 2012 about the likely effectiveness of netting or other capture programs as a shark hazard mitigation strategy in WA also suggested the Federal Environment Minister would need to be consulted.

"It is likely that the activity would need to be referred to the Commonwealth Government," the report noted.

The Bond University report said "shark control programs are generally considered to have improved the safety of people in the water" but were only useful in relatively calm waters.

"Shark mesh nets do not create a physical barrier to sharks; rather, they affect the local and potentially overall abundance of shark species responsible for attacks on humans," the report stated.

It noted that shark meshing programs in other areas had negative impacts on threatened species.

"The [program] in NSW had negative impacts on a number of threatened species including: grey nurse shark, loggerhead turtles, dugong, great white shark, green turtle, leatherback turtle, humpback whale and Australian fur seals."

The report said that by-catch would likely be high in the first few years of the operation of nets.

"A key environmental issue with the use of mesh nets for shark control in both Queensland and NSW, is that catch rates of by-catch species were exceptionally high in the years just after placement of the nets in the water and then declined to relatively constant levels.

"The most likely explanation for this is that the mesh nets "fished down" the local populations of a number of by-catch species. This is not surprising since the aim of shark nets is to fish down local fauna- specifically larger individuals of key species."

Acoustic alarms known as pingers were trialed in Queensland and contributed to a reduction in the numbers of sharks caught. It is not yet known if pingers will be used with the shark nets to be installed in WA.

Shark nets must be used on calmer beaches in order to be effective.

But the results of a 2012 study carried out by the WA Fisheries Department concluded that swimmers were the least likely to be killed or injured by sharks despite swimmer numbers exceeding those undertaking other water activities.

It listed snorkelers, divers and surfers as those most often involved in fatal shark incidents.

Greens MLC Lynn MacLaren said the shark net that had been trialled in Dunsborough last summer had issues.

"As evidenced by photographs and eye witness accounts, the Old Dunsborough net enclosure, which was modelled on Gold Coast gear, had huge holes due to poor design," she said.

"This begs the question why the WA Government thumbed its nose at using the WA technology known as Eco Shark Barrier, which eventually was tested using private money due to State Government lack of interest, at Coogee, and was a huge success.

"Despite not yet releasing the review of last summer's Dunsborough enclosure, which was due in June, the Premier is claiming the Dunsborough net was a complete success."